Robert Tanitch reviews Oil at Almeida Theatre, London N1
Robert Icke, associate director at the Almeida, has said that he regularly walks out of theatres all the time, come the interval, finding most contemporary theatre thoroughly boring.
I must say I did wonder if Icke had already seen Carrie Cracknell’s production of Ella Hickson’s Oil at the Almeida.
OIL conjures up dramatic images of pumps and rigs on land and sea and fires burning in Iraq during the Iraq War and, on a lighter note, many Hollywood movies and not least James Dean in Giant
Hickson takes the audience on an epic journey from 1889 to an apocalyptic future in 2051.
The play begins with the Americans wanting to take over a farm in darkest Cornwall to get oil and ends with the Chinese taking over the moon to get oil.
What do we do when the oil runs out? It’s a good question.
The pace of life gets faster and faster. We need to slow down if we want to achieve stability.
There is a delightful Saudi aphorism which is quoted in the programme: My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet airplane. His son will ride a camel.
Hickson concentrates on a relationship between a mother and her daughter, a relationship so turbulent that it needs all the oil its troubled waters can get.
Annie-Marie Duff is the mother who does not age over a 150 year span, moving from Cornwall to Tehran to Libya, always rising in the social scale. Starting off as farmwife and then graduating to servant she finally becomes an oil company executive.
Yolanda Kettle plays her stroppy 15 year-old daughter who gives her a lot of lip and has sex with an unprepossessing 15-year-old boy
Carrie Cracknell’s production lasts 2 hours 40 minutes. Audiences will need to oil up. The play doesn’t always work.
To learn more about Robert Tanitch and his reviews, click here to go to his website
